George Kerby – the First Week

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Today marked the first week of George Kerby, the Golden Retriever, living with me at the Ainsley Institute.  Today also marked his 8 week birthday.

Slide show above shows some of the highlights of the week.  Thursday, we took him to the vet, and Dr. Pokey pronounced George in good health – which is quite the relief.  Since Cary Grant, the Golden we got in November, died after only 15 days here of a rare and very severe heart ailment, we were quite worried about George, especially since he came from the same breeder.  Fortunately, though, the Heart of George was good – nary a murmur.

Saturday, as you see above, we took a family pic of me, George and Mr. Bear.  Could not get George to stand still.  We had the idea of taking a pic every week to monitor his growth.  At the vet Thursday George was 8.3 pounds.  Yesterday, George was 9.5 pounds.  I did some research – and  in another month, George should be bigger than me, just over 20 pounds.  And a month after that, George should be around 35 pounds.   He is getting big fast and  he has already left that cute as a button little puppy stage and started to enter the all legs and paws gawky stage.

George doesn’t have all his shots, so we are being careful about where he goes.  But we did have my cousin Juno, an Australian Shepherd, come to play with George.  You see in the slideshow a picture of George, me, Juno, my hooman cousing Summer, and her best friend Caitlin at the Ainsley Institute.  And also Mr. Bear tried to get in the picture as well.

Remember last week I said George is going to be a lot mellower than Cary Grant was?  Well, I was wrong.  George has turned out to be quite the high energy troublemaker.  Looking back, I guess Cary was indeed dying the whole time he was here.  Cary was a lot sweeter and mellower and slept more  – probably the poor guy just didn’t ever feel right.  Word on the street, though, is Cary is feeling great now as the dessert chef at my brother Angus Fala’s Boiled Egg and Ice Cream Parlor at the Rainbow Bridge.  Though George is a “replacement” Golden from Cary’s breeder, no one can replace Cary.  No one.

So how am I getting along with George?  Well, for the first few days I wanted nothing to do with George.  As you can see here, from a video over the weekend, my Zone of Hostility, which I learned from my brother Angus, is implemented and performing quite nicely.

However, a break through last night – I did play with George for a bit.  But then I was done, and he still wanted to play, but I let him know with a sharp growl that play time was officially over.  He was confused, but it’s great to keep him guessing.

Anyway, that’s my report of George’s first week.

Ainsley McKenna